Page 105 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

P1: GCV/INL P2: GCV
0521835356agg.xml Hallin 0 521 83535 6 January 20, 2004 17:24

PART II

The Three Models

In Part II we examine the media systems of each of our three groups of
countriesindetail,exploringthelogicandthehistoricalevolutionofeach
ofthethreemodelsintroducedinPartI.WediscusstheMediterraneanor
Polarized Pluralist Model in Chapter 5; the North/Central European or
Democratic Corporatist Model in Chapter 6; and the North Atlantic
or Liberal Model in Chapter 7. In each case, we try to stress both the
common elements that define our three models, and the ways in which
the media systems of individual countries vary from the three ideal types.
Each of the three chapters in Part II begins with a discussion of the his-
torical origins of the press, continues to discuss the characteristics of the
media system, and moves in the final section to a discussion of the po-
litical context in which each media system evolved and an analysis of the
links between the media system variables introduced in Chapter 2 and
the political system variables introduced in Chapter 3. The discussions
of the three media system models are essentially organized around the
four variables proposed in Chapter 2: the development of media mar-
kets and particularly of the mass circulation press, political parallelism,
journalistic professionalism, and the role of the state. The exact struc-
tures of the chapters vary somewhat, however, because different issues
require extended discussion in the different cases. In the case of the Po-
larized Pluralist Model, for example, we move from an initial discussion
of journalistic professionalization into an extended discussion of instru-
mentalizaton of the media; in the case of the Democratic Corporatist
Model we include a special discussion of the complex relation between
commercial media markets and political parallelism.

87